Defence Spending

Report opens EU budget to defence industry

The European Parliament today adopted the report on the impact of the financial crisis on the defence sector (Lisek report), voting in favour of allocating additional funds of the EU budget for defence research and several other projects. After the vote, Green defence spokesman Reinhard Bütikofer said:

"This is a bad day for Common European Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) and especially for the European taxpayer.With today's adoption of the Lisek report, the European Parliament's majority missed an opportunity to send out a strong signal for deeper cooperation in the defence sector and for advocating cost-efficient "pooling and sharing" projects.

Instead of finding ways for Member States to cooperate closely in CSDP matters and to coordinate their defence policies in times of austerity and scarce resources, the European Parliament regrettably voted for the EU budget to fill the gap of national defence cuts. We Greens are strongly against exploiting the EU budget for defence research which would come to the detriment of civilian aspects of the Horizon 2020 program. We are also clearly opposed to funding defence industry restructuring with EU Social Funds and using the EU budget for financing the European Security and Defence College. The proposal to create a military Erasmus programme, financed from EU funds, takes the cake in terms of wasteful spending."